Competing Views Around The Value And Ownership Of Digital Resources Impacting API Security

19 Apr 2016

I was reading a post about how having an unclear sense of ownership hurts API security, which showcases the different views on who owns security, when it comes to exposing corporate digital assets via APIs. When I read the title, I anticipated the story being about a difference in how ownership of the asset(s) itself is viewed, but it ended up focusing on the ownership of security itself, not ownership of the assets which are being exposed -- something I think gets closer to the root of the problem, than who "owns security".

In short, the IT and developers who are often charged with exposing corporate assets via APIs will view those digital resource in some very different ways, than other people at the company. These groups will focus on exposing digital resources in a very technical sense, making them available so that others can integrate into their apps and systems--it isn't always in their nature to secure things sensibly. Their focus is to open up access, something the article touches on, but is something I think it goes deeper than just being about API security. Developers and IT are rarely ever going to see the digital resource in the same way that business stakeholders will, let alone security focused players (hopefully your IT and dev team has specialist influencing things).

APIs have made a name for themselves because a handful of companies successfully exposed their digital resources in this new way, allowing external perspectives of those digital resources to enter the conversation, which allowed for innovation to occur. In this handful of API origin stories we tell like to tell, owners of the digital resources at play were open to outside views of what their digital resource was, and how that resource could be put to use. These leading companies were open to an alternative view of the ownership and access of these digital resources, something that allowed API platforms to flourish << This is not something that will happen in all situations.

APIs really begin to go wrong, when the sense of ownership around digital resource is already unhealthy, resulting in what my friend Ed Anuff speaks of, with everyone doing the API economy wrong. Without proper buy-in, developers and IT will often overlook security around resources being exposed--they just don't understand the importance of the resource in the same way. Coming from the opposite direction, business users will often come in and apply their "wet blanket" sense of ownership on the platform--resulting in heavy handed registration and approval flows, sales cycle(s), pricing, rate limits, and other common things you see slow API adoption.

APIs should be about us exposing our digital resources using the now ubiquitous Internet technology, in a way that opens up our resources, and the culture our business, organizations, institutions, and government agencies to outside views about what our resources are, and how they can be put to use. This is something that when done in the right environment, can reap some serious benefits for everyone involved, but when done in a culture where there is a already an imbalance around what digital resource ownership is, shit can really go wrong -- with security being just one stage where it plays out. In the end, APIs are not for everyone. Some people just have too strict of a view around the value of their digital resources, and of the ownership of that resource, for the API thing to every actually work--with company IT and developer security practices being just a symptom of a much larger illness.